Marriage certificate surname typo, amended certificate questions

[dephekt 2]

I'm an American citizen and my Filipino wife and I were married in the Philippines Dec. 19, 2020. We both are living in the Philippines until we can get her CR-1 visa processed. The pastor who officiated the wedding made a one letter typo on my wife's name in one place on the marriage certificate he submitted to the local civil registrar (LCR). It's only spelled wrong in one place, it appears numerous other times in the correct spelling.

 

We found this out when we went to the LCR to receive the finalized marriage certificate, e.g. the document we would be including with our CR-1 package. We immediately filed an amendment petition to get the surname fixed, but this process can take 3-6 months before you receive the amended marriage certificate.

 

Do you all think it would be quicker to submit our CR-1 stuff now even with the misspelling and possibly also include the amendment petition to show that it's being fixed, and then when we have our interview we would bring the finalized certificate (or possibly risk an RFE for the amended certificate and whatever additional time that adds to the process?) Or wait 3-6 months to receive the amended marriage certificate?

 

We're wondering if we wait 3-6 months for the amended version or file now with what we have, get the process started, and risk the RFE. I'm not sure which situation would play out taking the least amount of time.

Edited January 28, 2021 by dephekt
stuff

[Adventine 3,196]

I am not sure, but I hope other more experienced posters will chime in soon.

 

Were you able to obtain the “Affidavit In Lieu of a Certificate of Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage" from the US Embassy Manila? 

[dephekt 2]

1 hour ago, Adventine said:

I am not sure, but I hope other more experienced posters will chime in soon.

 

Were you able to obtain the “Affidavit In Lieu of a Certificate of Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage" from the US Embassy Manila? 

Yeah, that was required before we could get the marriage license from the LCR. I live in Cebu, so we got it from the consulate here but yeah.

 

That being said, NONE of the judges in Cebu City, Lapu Lapu or Mandaue City would accept the Affidavit in Lieu of Certificate of Legal Capacity, even though the LCR did when they provided us with the marriage license. The judges all said it was just a self-attestation of legal capacity to marry and refused to perform our civil ceremony without a certificate of legal capacity from the US embassy, which as you probably already know, the US embassy cannot provide as there's no national registry of marriages in the US.

 

We ended up having to find a pastor here that would accept it. He was fine except that he made a typo on the marriage certificate he filed. He didn't show us the final version to review before he submitted it, so that really is causing all the problems here now.

[Adventine 3,196]

1 minute ago, dephekt said:

Yeah, that was required before we could get the marriage license from the LCR. I live in Cebu, so we got it from the consulate here but yeah.

 

That being said, NONE of the judges in Cebu City, Lapu Lapu or Mandaue City would accept the Affidavit in Lieu of Certificate of Legal Capacity, even though the LCR did when they provided us with the marriage license. The judges all said it was just a self-attestation of legal capacity to marry and refused to perform our civil ceremony without a certificate of legal capacity from the US embassy, which as you probably already know, the US embassy cannot provide as there's no national registry of marriages in the US.

 

We ended up having to find a pastor here that would accept it. He was fine except that he made a typo on the marriage certificate he filed. He didn't show us the final version to review before he submitted it, so that really is causing all the problems here now.

It's good to know the Cebu consulate is issuing that document again. Last I heard, the Manila embassy wasn't.

 

Also glad you found a pastor who accepted to perform your ceremony (belated congratulations, by the way!). 

 

I would lean on the side of getting the typo fixed before you submit the petition, and make sure that the corrected document has been filed with PSA (Philippine Statistics Authority), but that's just my personal preference and is not based on precedent cases. You may be able to get better answers in the Philippines regional forum. You can ask the moderators to move this whole thread there.

[dephekt 2]

19 minutes ago, Adventine said:

It's good to know the Cebu consulate is issuing that document again. Last I heard, the Manila embassy wasn't.

 

Also glad you found a pastor who accepted to perform your ceremony (belated congratulations, by the way!). 

 

I would lean on the side of getting the typo fixed before you submit the petition, and make sure that the corrected document has been filed with PSA (Philippine Statistics Authority), but that's just my personal preference and is not based on precedent cases. You may be able to get better answers in the Philippines regional forum. You can ask the moderators to move this whole thread there.

Ah I should mention I got the affidavit in lieu of legal capacity before the pandemic back in January 2020. I don’t know if the consulate is still issuing them or not post pandemic.

[Adventine 3,196]

1 minute ago, dephekt said:

Ah I should mention I got the affidavit in lieu of legal capacity before the pandemic back in January 2020. I don’t know if the consulate is still issuing them or not post pandemic.

Thanks for the clarification. I know a few people who would dearly love to get married in the Philippines, but haven't been able to because the USC, even while living here, can't get this document.

[millefleur 5,046]

**Moved from IR-1 / CR-1 Spouse Visa Process & Procedures to PHIL regional forum; question is country specific**

[dephekt 2]

I'm still looking for an answer on this, if anyone has any experience with this problem.

 

The issue is our marriage certificate has my wife's last name spelled wrong in one place (an "i" where there should be a "u"). It's spelled correctly in all the other locations where it's written on the marriage certificate. We already have a request in to have it amended to correct the spelling, but it could take 3-6 months before the amended certificate is available.

 

Should we file for the CR-1 now using the marriage certificate we have and when we have the amended version we can bring that to the interview or lose the 3-6 months of time waiting for the amended certificate to be ready before filing our CR-1 packet?

[RO_AH 1,659]

5 hours ago, dephekt said:

I'm still looking for an answer on this, if anyone has any experience with this problem.

 

The issue is our marriage certificate has my wife's last name spelled wrong in one place (an "i" where there should be a "u"). It's spelled correctly in all the other locations where it's written on the marriage certificate. We already have a request in to have it amended to correct the spelling, but it could take 3-6 months before the amended certificate is available.

 

Should we file for the CR-1 now using the marriage certificate we have and when we have the amended version we can bring that to the interview or lose the 3-6 months of time waiting for the amended certificate to be ready before filing our CR-1 packet?

You can file with the LCR certificate, however you will almost certainly get an RFE because you are required to send in a PSA certificate not the LCR certificate. If you have already talked to the LCR about amending it, you may just have to wait. You can ask the LCR if there is any way to expedite it. Most areas you can pay a fee and expedite the process to a few weeks.

 

Let this be a lesson to you, when it comes to official documents in the Philippines you probably have a 50/50 chance or worse that it will be correct. I think the laid back style there causes them to not worry too much about details which are very important to us. My wife's birth certificate had her listed as male. The birth dates for her parents on her birth certificate had them in their 70's when she was born. I had to help her get that fixed before we could marry. One of our son's birth certificates has me listed as Filipino.  ALways read and re-read the document before it is submitted.

[dephekt 2]

On 2/2/2021 at 12:17 PM, RO_AH said:

ALways read and re-read the document before it is submitted.

Yeah, we did actually. We sat down with the pastor and covered all these details, he even had copies of our IDs for easy reference. We had a meeting a week before where he presented a certificate with the misspelling and we corrected it there (in writing), he took notes on it, then he somehow repeated the mistake later. The issue was he went and submitted the marriage certificate paperwork without giving us a chance to do one last final review beforehand. I was (and still am) pretty upset about that, but there was literally nothing we could do about it that we didn't do in this case.

 

I'm being extra vigilant with our child's certificate of live birth when this happens in the next week. At least in that case, I will control the spelling and I will be turning the paperwork in to the LCR so I can ensure it's done correctly before it gets submitted anywhere.

[RO_AH 1,659]

9 hours ago, dephekt said:

Yeah, we did actually. We sat down with the pastor and covered all these details, he even had copies of our IDs for easy reference. We had a meeting a week before where he presented a certificate with the misspelling and we corrected it there (in writing), he took notes on it, then he somehow repeated the mistake later. The issue was he went and submitted the marriage certificate paperwork without giving us a chance to do one last final review beforehand. I was (and still am) pretty upset about that, but there was literally nothing we could do about it that we didn't do in this case.

 

I'm being extra vigilant with our child's certificate of live birth when this happens in the next week. At least in that case, I will control the spelling and I will be turning the paperwork in to the LCR so I can ensure it's done correctly before it gets submitted anywhere.

I wasn't blaming you. All you can do is your best to try and make documents accurate. It's still a chance they will get it wrong. It sucks but that's the Philippines.